The unintentionally hilarious comments on the Olympics opening ceremony by various right-wing curmudgeons have been revealing. Most attention has gone to Aidan Burley's attack on "leftie multi-cultural crap", but a review of the rest shows a shared worldview that extends beyond a dislike of urban music and miscegenation. The NHS is seen as "socialist" and a "nationalised stranglehold", and its celebration is a party political broadcast for Labour.
The NHS isn't socialist. It's fundamentally a liberal institution, owing more in its design to Bismarck than Marx. Though hospitals are nationalised, the pharmaceutical and medical supply industries are not, and nor is hospital construction, which means private profit is drained from the public sector. Doctors remain private practitioners, with little incentive to invest in preventative care. There is no workers control, the privatisation of ancillary services has been common for decades, and local democratic oversight is now non-existent. Of course, if you believe "socialist" is synonymous with "not privately-owned", then I can see why the confusion arises.
My favourite comment was Rupert Murdoch's: "London Olympic opening surprisingly great, even if a little too politically correct", implying that there might be an appropriate level of political correctness on such an occasion. What, I wonder, would make it less PC in Rupe's eyes? An all-white cast, a celebration of the entrepreneurial spirit of drug dealers, a tableau of famous Sun headlines? Political correctness is a straw man, so this comment is just an example of how it tends to be crow-barred into the conversation at every opportunity. Coincidentally, I came across an interesting quote on the subject from the misanthropic right-wing psychiatrist, Theodore Dalrymple (a sort of minor-key Celine):
"Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to."
Enforced silence and "assent to obvious lies" are characteristic of the classic Orwellian trope of self-repression in a totalitarian society. This not only "humiliates" the individual, but corrupts them to a point where their ability to resist anything is "destroyed". The problem with this is that it doesn't accord with reality. Did 40 years of Communism result in the people of Eastern Europe losing their sense of probity "once and for all"? Did they "in some small way" become evil? Were they easier to control in 1989 than in 1949?
The segue implies that political correctness should be seen as an organised propaganda effort, with some shadowy bureaucracy coordinating a masterplan. I bet they even use spreadsheets and hold team meetings. Central to this effort is the dissemination of lies and the enforcement of silence on particular topics. Thus political correctness prevents us from criticising Islam for misogyny, or suggesting that rap culture glorifies crime, or that poor people are congenital failures. Nope, you'll never see mention of any of that in newspapers or online.
It's easy to laugh at this paranoid conflation of the Stasi and political correctness, but the point about silence is suggestive. If we are living in a society that is repressed by PC, then the evidence for this would include an unwillingness to talk about certain subjects. Not just minor issues that we can push to the margins, but big issues that affect most people. So what are the things we don't speak of?
We praise democracy and even seek to "spread" it to other countries, sometimes through war, but we have an aversion to it in the workplace. The overwhelming majority of businesses are run as dictatorships. Literally. The word of the guy at the top is law. Dissent will result in sanctions and ultimately expulsion. We secure advancement through flattery and groupthink. The guy at the top doesn't really know what is going on because he is out of touch and we fear speaking truth to power (we even celebrate this in reality TV shows). In this, the NHS is no different to a private business.
One of the themes of the Olympic love-in has been admiration for the opening night supremo, Danny Boyle. Many of the anecdotes tell of his willingness to listen to anyone, his inclusivity and humility. He is, in other words, the ideal boss, and as such he's about as representative as Mary Poppins is of child-minders. Talking of the cast and crew, he said "The show belongs to them, the country belongs to them." A nice sentiment, but neither is true.
Sunday, 29 July 2012
Saturday, 28 July 2012
London Calling
I've been conscious for a while that this blog has been a bit light on the music. Even the Arse has taken a back seat to politics and economics, though that reflects the strange times we are living through. So, I had vaguely planned a rambling roundup of the stuff I've been listening to of late, when I was given an elbow-in-the-ribs by last night's telly. Not only was the Olympic opening ceremony better than the Stars on 45 / Jive Bunny melange that we feared, but BBC4 had an excellent documentary on Krautrock at the same time. Were they trying to bury it?
Coincidentally, I had been listening this week to the best of Can (Anthology 1968-93). I had arrived at this after following a musical chain reaction that started with the collected works of the Buzzcocks, progressed via Magazine, then took a back-flip via Iggy Pop (Lust for Life and The Idiot) and David Bowie (Low) before alighting on Holger Czukay (the sublime Movies and On the Way to the Peak of Normal), from which I bifurcated forward to Jah Wobble (I Could Have Been a Contender) and backward to Can, with odd excursions to Captain Beefheart, Pere Ubu and Wire along the way. As you can see, I like the weird stuff.
At t'Olympic Park, there was no doubting the power of Going Underground, Pretty Vacant, Heroes, and I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor, and even Macca wasn't too awful, though mainly because he wasn't Elton John. Danny Boyle's slightly more grownup than usual treatment of history will no doubt go down a treat, though the gaps were telling: plenty of suffragettes, not so many trades unionists; a parachuting Queen, but no mention of Cromwell (ironically, Michael Wood broached the 17th century earlier in the evening on BBC2, and made a passionate case for remembrance of the Levellers).
The focus on the NHS and music was both popular and clever, distracting attention from the diminishing role of industry (you can't dance a hedge fund) and the absence of a modern-day Brunel (Tim Berners-Lee really isn't comparable and Dizee Rascal is not a renaissance man). Ultimately, it will all be forgotten as we fixate on the german doing the Nazi salute, with Camilla and Boris pissing themselves in the background. What larks.
The Krautrock documentary took a more sober view, noting the effect that superficial denazification had on cultural life and the political development of the Red Army Faction, aka the Baader-Meinhof gang. One member of the gang, Astrid Proll, would end up hiding out in London till her arrest in 1978, at a time when The Clash were wearing RAF emblems for shock value. London Calling was a year away.
On the music front of more recent vintage I would recommend Sharon van Etten: Serpents and Give Out; Dirty Projectors: Gun Has No Trigger; Torche: Kicking; and Washed Out: Amor Fati. I do like Frank Ocean's Pyramids, but I still prefer his Songs for Women.
Coincidentally, I had been listening this week to the best of Can (Anthology 1968-93). I had arrived at this after following a musical chain reaction that started with the collected works of the Buzzcocks, progressed via Magazine, then took a back-flip via Iggy Pop (Lust for Life and The Idiot) and David Bowie (Low) before alighting on Holger Czukay (the sublime Movies and On the Way to the Peak of Normal), from which I bifurcated forward to Jah Wobble (I Could Have Been a Contender) and backward to Can, with odd excursions to Captain Beefheart, Pere Ubu and Wire along the way. As you can see, I like the weird stuff.
At t'Olympic Park, there was no doubting the power of Going Underground, Pretty Vacant, Heroes, and I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor, and even Macca wasn't too awful, though mainly because he wasn't Elton John. Danny Boyle's slightly more grownup than usual treatment of history will no doubt go down a treat, though the gaps were telling: plenty of suffragettes, not so many trades unionists; a parachuting Queen, but no mention of Cromwell (ironically, Michael Wood broached the 17th century earlier in the evening on BBC2, and made a passionate case for remembrance of the Levellers).
The focus on the NHS and music was both popular and clever, distracting attention from the diminishing role of industry (you can't dance a hedge fund) and the absence of a modern-day Brunel (Tim Berners-Lee really isn't comparable and Dizee Rascal is not a renaissance man). Ultimately, it will all be forgotten as we fixate on the german doing the Nazi salute, with Camilla and Boris pissing themselves in the background. What larks.
The Krautrock documentary took a more sober view, noting the effect that superficial denazification had on cultural life and the political development of the Red Army Faction, aka the Baader-Meinhof gang. One member of the gang, Astrid Proll, would end up hiding out in London till her arrest in 1978, at a time when The Clash were wearing RAF emblems for shock value. London Calling was a year away.
On the music front of more recent vintage I would recommend Sharon van Etten: Serpents and Give Out; Dirty Projectors: Gun Has No Trigger; Torche: Kicking; and Washed Out: Amor Fati. I do like Frank Ocean's Pyramids, but I still prefer his Songs for Women.
Friday, 27 July 2012
Enough with the Flying Cars, Where did the 15-hour Week Go?
Paul Krugman got in on the flying car lament this week: "If you look at what futurists were predicting 40 or 45 years ago, they somewhat underpredicted progress in IT (except for the artificial intelligence thing), but wildly overpredicted progress in dealing with the material world. Weren’t we supposed to have underwater cities, commercial space flight, and flying cars by now". His tongue was obviously wedged in his cheek, but the point about the difference between IT and material science is significant.
Futurists are clairvoyants. In other words, they use cold reading techniques to pick up clues from the here and now in order to make suggestive guesses, so future predictions tend to reflect contemporary concerns and expectations. In the 60s, underwater cities and space flight were reasonable extrapolations of developing technology and also reflected both the positive New Frontier vibe and concerns about over-population. By the 70s, the Green Revolution had eased the latter and attention shifted to fears about energy (following the oil shock of 1973), environmental stress and social breakdown (as globalisation and deindustrialisation kicked in), with a pervading sense that technology was a double-edged sword and perhaps beyond human control (Future Shock).
Underwater cities found no takers (it's easier to use subsea robots), while space flight has devolved to strip-mining asteroids (the new New Frontier). The problem isn't doing it, but finding a viable reason to do it. Today we speculate about the singularity, bioengineering and immersive virtual-reality entertainment systems, which (I think) reflects a belief that a post-work/post-scarcity world is coming, assuming we sort out limitless energy.
And flying cars? Traffic management is bad enough in two dimensions without adding a third (planes need air traffic controllers, cars don't). And how exactly will the car fly? You can't generate enough speed to produce lift in a 30mph zone, and anti-gravity simply isn't going to happen in this particular quantum universe. The future is probably driverless electric cars and automatic flow management, which holds out the prospect of increased capacity with fewer jams and less pollution. A bit dull, really, but it would avoid the need for Olympic lanes, and it might even reintroduce drink-driving.
The flying car lament is so pervasive that you have to suspect some ideological resonance. The opening title sequence of The Jetsons is significant not because of the flying car, but its use as a way to get to work, drop the kids off at school, and drop the wife off at the store (this was the early 60s, just before second cars became common in the US), a sequence parodied by The Simpsons (with two cars). Flying cars look futuristic, but they're part of a highly conservative worldview in which we still labour for 40 hours a week, the wife might work but is still primarily a "homemaker", and the kids get a high-quality education so they too can progress to full-time jobs.
John Maynard Keynes, in his 1930 essay The Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, envisaged a future in which technological advance and the wonders of compound interest applied to capital accumulation would allow us to reduce the working week to 15 hours within 100 years. Despite being a high-minded member of the Bloomsbury set, who went on to become the founding chairman of the Arts Council, he was cautious about prescribing how we should "live wisely and agreeably and well", but chamber music, good books and country walks probably featured. This circumspection lives on among modern advocates, though comments about the "good life" and sustainability are indicative of the moral foundation. We should be honest and cut the value judgements altogether. If you want to spend your days playing on your X-box and reading Heat, then so be it.
Many proposals to reduce the working week present it as a trade-off with growth, i.e. a zero-growth model means shorter hours, and vice versa. I think this is wrong. I suspect we can have both positive growth and shorter hours. The trope of techno-pessimism has been with us a long time. Keynes in his essay opens with "It is common to hear people say that the epoch of enormous economic progress which characterised the nineteenth century is over; that the rapid improvement in the standard of life is now going to slow down". That was in 1930, remember. Since the 1970s, I believe we have been offsetting rapid technological advance by creating supernumerary white-collar jobs at the same time as we have automated or offshored blue-collar ones. This has served to depress productivity growth rates, maintain the standard working week, and has also contributed to stagnant median wage growth.
This strategy can be interpreted as a compact between capital and the middle class. Though the former would prefer to maximise profit and thus accumulation, they need the support of the key electoral bloc to maintain the economic order. Job creation for the middle class is tolerated as a quid pro quo, a form of clientelism. The key difference between Northern and Southern Italy is that "jobs for the boys" (and girls) are mainly through the private sector in one and the public sector in the other. That geographical distinction has become more apparent in the UK over the last 15 years: more hospital administrators in Leeds and more corporate social responsibility managers in London.
As work has increasingly become a token for access to economic rent, ideology has taken on a more moralistic tone centred on just desserts. If you are unemployed, you probably deserve it ("there are plenty of jobs"); if you are poor, it's your own fault ("that's the market rate"); if you're on benefits, you don't deserve them ("they're all cheats"). At the other end of the scale, bonuses are paid for turning up to work and regardless of company performance ("you have to retain the talent"). The 40-hour week isn't necessary for the economy as a whole, but it is necessary to preserve the unequal distribution of work.
If work was rationed, it would be fairer to spread it equally across all those who wish to work, but it would also make sense to not allocate it to those who won't/can't make use of it, as that just wastes an opportunity for someone else. If brussel sprouts were rationed, I'd be happy to forgo my portion for someone who actually likes them. A rationed approach would inevitably lead to a basic income model, i.e. an unconditional living wage for all. This would allow working hours to be reduced to their underlying (real) level of productivity, while maintaining workers income. However, that would also mean paying the feckless, which would cause many to gag (like me with sprouts). In truth, we always pay them anyway. We just humiliate them before we allow them to not starve on our watch.
A 15-hour working week is a lot more feasible than flying cars, but it stands no better chance of being implemented any time soon. To do so would require a more egalitarian approach to work than any mainstream political party seems prepared to advance, largely because of the fear of a moral backlash. The demonisation of benefit recipients is less about reducing public expenditure and more about preserving the loyalty of those in work, so you can expect it to get worse. Unlike future predictions, divide and rule never ages.
Futurists are clairvoyants. In other words, they use cold reading techniques to pick up clues from the here and now in order to make suggestive guesses, so future predictions tend to reflect contemporary concerns and expectations. In the 60s, underwater cities and space flight were reasonable extrapolations of developing technology and also reflected both the positive New Frontier vibe and concerns about over-population. By the 70s, the Green Revolution had eased the latter and attention shifted to fears about energy (following the oil shock of 1973), environmental stress and social breakdown (as globalisation and deindustrialisation kicked in), with a pervading sense that technology was a double-edged sword and perhaps beyond human control (Future Shock).
Underwater cities found no takers (it's easier to use subsea robots), while space flight has devolved to strip-mining asteroids (the new New Frontier). The problem isn't doing it, but finding a viable reason to do it. Today we speculate about the singularity, bioengineering and immersive virtual-reality entertainment systems, which (I think) reflects a belief that a post-work/post-scarcity world is coming, assuming we sort out limitless energy.
And flying cars? Traffic management is bad enough in two dimensions without adding a third (planes need air traffic controllers, cars don't). And how exactly will the car fly? You can't generate enough speed to produce lift in a 30mph zone, and anti-gravity simply isn't going to happen in this particular quantum universe. The future is probably driverless electric cars and automatic flow management, which holds out the prospect of increased capacity with fewer jams and less pollution. A bit dull, really, but it would avoid the need for Olympic lanes, and it might even reintroduce drink-driving.
The flying car lament is so pervasive that you have to suspect some ideological resonance. The opening title sequence of The Jetsons is significant not because of the flying car, but its use as a way to get to work, drop the kids off at school, and drop the wife off at the store (this was the early 60s, just before second cars became common in the US), a sequence parodied by The Simpsons (with two cars). Flying cars look futuristic, but they're part of a highly conservative worldview in which we still labour for 40 hours a week, the wife might work but is still primarily a "homemaker", and the kids get a high-quality education so they too can progress to full-time jobs.
John Maynard Keynes, in his 1930 essay The Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, envisaged a future in which technological advance and the wonders of compound interest applied to capital accumulation would allow us to reduce the working week to 15 hours within 100 years. Despite being a high-minded member of the Bloomsbury set, who went on to become the founding chairman of the Arts Council, he was cautious about prescribing how we should "live wisely and agreeably and well", but chamber music, good books and country walks probably featured. This circumspection lives on among modern advocates, though comments about the "good life" and sustainability are indicative of the moral foundation. We should be honest and cut the value judgements altogether. If you want to spend your days playing on your X-box and reading Heat, then so be it.
Many proposals to reduce the working week present it as a trade-off with growth, i.e. a zero-growth model means shorter hours, and vice versa. I think this is wrong. I suspect we can have both positive growth and shorter hours. The trope of techno-pessimism has been with us a long time. Keynes in his essay opens with "It is common to hear people say that the epoch of enormous economic progress which characterised the nineteenth century is over; that the rapid improvement in the standard of life is now going to slow down". That was in 1930, remember. Since the 1970s, I believe we have been offsetting rapid technological advance by creating supernumerary white-collar jobs at the same time as we have automated or offshored blue-collar ones. This has served to depress productivity growth rates, maintain the standard working week, and has also contributed to stagnant median wage growth.
This strategy can be interpreted as a compact between capital and the middle class. Though the former would prefer to maximise profit and thus accumulation, they need the support of the key electoral bloc to maintain the economic order. Job creation for the middle class is tolerated as a quid pro quo, a form of clientelism. The key difference between Northern and Southern Italy is that "jobs for the boys" (and girls) are mainly through the private sector in one and the public sector in the other. That geographical distinction has become more apparent in the UK over the last 15 years: more hospital administrators in Leeds and more corporate social responsibility managers in London.
As work has increasingly become a token for access to economic rent, ideology has taken on a more moralistic tone centred on just desserts. If you are unemployed, you probably deserve it ("there are plenty of jobs"); if you are poor, it's your own fault ("that's the market rate"); if you're on benefits, you don't deserve them ("they're all cheats"). At the other end of the scale, bonuses are paid for turning up to work and regardless of company performance ("you have to retain the talent"). The 40-hour week isn't necessary for the economy as a whole, but it is necessary to preserve the unequal distribution of work.
If work was rationed, it would be fairer to spread it equally across all those who wish to work, but it would also make sense to not allocate it to those who won't/can't make use of it, as that just wastes an opportunity for someone else. If brussel sprouts were rationed, I'd be happy to forgo my portion for someone who actually likes them. A rationed approach would inevitably lead to a basic income model, i.e. an unconditional living wage for all. This would allow working hours to be reduced to their underlying (real) level of productivity, while maintaining workers income. However, that would also mean paying the feckless, which would cause many to gag (like me with sprouts). In truth, we always pay them anyway. We just humiliate them before we allow them to not starve on our watch.
A 15-hour working week is a lot more feasible than flying cars, but it stands no better chance of being implemented any time soon. To do so would require a more egalitarian approach to work than any mainstream political party seems prepared to advance, largely because of the fear of a moral backlash. The demonisation of benefit recipients is less about reducing public expenditure and more about preserving the loyalty of those in work, so you can expect it to get worse. Unlike future predictions, divide and rule never ages.
Saturday, 21 July 2012
des Engländers Angst vor dem Elfmeter
Are penalties a fair way to decide a football match? Are England just plain unlucky? I was reading an article that looked at their poor record (which in passing mentioned a wonderful sounding research paper on The effect of rugby match outcome on spectator aggression and intention to drink
alcohol) and noticed a helpful link to a detailed analysis conducted after they made a total "Ashley" of it back in June. What caught my eye was not England's abysmal record (a 14% win ratio) but the almost equally bad record of the Dutch (only 20%).
This should be evidence enough that the problem is not lack of technique. The only slightly better record of the Italians (38%) also shows that familiarity is not decisive either. Italy took part in 8 shootouts over the period analysed (from 1990), compared to England's 7 and Holland's 5. Germany took part in 6 but have a win ratio of 83%. I think we can also dismiss the idea that because England do more running (they don't - this is just an assumption based on the poor technique belief), they are more tired and thus less effective at the end of extra-time. Everyone is shattered.
Looking at the scoring rates, both England and Holland miss 1 in 3 of their penalties, while Germany only miss once in roughly every two shootouts. Conversely, England's opponents only miss 1 in 5 while Germany's miss 1 in 3. On the face of it, this implies that the "problem" is equal parts scoring and stopping. However, the norm seems to be a scoring and conceding rate of about 80%, i.e. you miss 1 in 5 and so does the opposition. Spain and France show that this will produce an overall win ratio of around 50%, which is what you should expect if the shootout were a lottery. Given that England also only concede 1 in 5, this points the finger back at scoring, though this leaves you wondering why Germany's opponents are regularly sub-par.
The evidence, I think, supports the "bottling it" theory, but not in the sense that players simply lack courage. Just being on the pitch requires that. England regularly fail at penalty shootouts because they expect to. It's worth remembering that their only competitive success since 1990 was against Spain in the quarter-final of Euro 96. I happened to be at that game at Wembley (I was a business freeloader), and I think it's fair to say that everyone's expectation was that England would get to the final. It should also be remembered that in the semi-final, England were running well-above their trend level, having scored 9 in a row (4 against Spain, 5 against Germany). Their failure was the result of a single miss at the start of sudden-death against a team that normally doesn't miss until that stage.
Germany's record is unusual in that they have both a good scoring (93%) and conceding (69%) rate. The two don't often go together - e.g. the Czech's have a 100% scoring rate but conceded 84%, while Portugal conceded only 55% but scored an average-looking 75%. Of course, this highlights that teams who compete in only a few shootouts (3 for the Czechs, 2 for the Portuguese), because they make it to the knock-out stage less often, stand a better chance of a high win ratio overall. Brazil, with a 60% win ratio over 10 shootouts, has an average scoring rate (75%) and a good conceding rate (68%).
What I think these figures may show is that not only are the Germans confident they'll go through, but their opponents seem pretty resigned to the same outcome. In contrast, Brazil's opponents seem slightly more confident in the Selecao than Brazil do themselves. England's opponents are not more confident than average (with the exception of the Germans). Since 1996, they have faced (and failed against) Argentina, Portugal (twice) and Italy. Portugal have a good record, but that is entirely the result of their two contests with England.
The recent match against Italy was typical of the pattern. Everyone was pleased that England had done better than expected, but few genuinely thought the team capable of going any further, and that opinion seemed to be shared by the players, to judge by their performance over the game. Being hard to defeat conclusively in a knockout match, penalties are always a likely outcome for England, and they tend to come at the point when the team has run out of ideas and consequently the belief that they can step up another level. Last 8 seems to be the realistic limit of ambition. In that sense, you have to say that penalties are fair.
So, my conclusion is simple and based on irrefutable evidence. England only win penalty shootouts when I'm in the stadium. If the FA would like to fly me out to Brazil in 2014, I would be happy to oblige.
This should be evidence enough that the problem is not lack of technique. The only slightly better record of the Italians (38%) also shows that familiarity is not decisive either. Italy took part in 8 shootouts over the period analysed (from 1990), compared to England's 7 and Holland's 5. Germany took part in 6 but have a win ratio of 83%. I think we can also dismiss the idea that because England do more running (they don't - this is just an assumption based on the poor technique belief), they are more tired and thus less effective at the end of extra-time. Everyone is shattered.
Looking at the scoring rates, both England and Holland miss 1 in 3 of their penalties, while Germany only miss once in roughly every two shootouts. Conversely, England's opponents only miss 1 in 5 while Germany's miss 1 in 3. On the face of it, this implies that the "problem" is equal parts scoring and stopping. However, the norm seems to be a scoring and conceding rate of about 80%, i.e. you miss 1 in 5 and so does the opposition. Spain and France show that this will produce an overall win ratio of around 50%, which is what you should expect if the shootout were a lottery. Given that England also only concede 1 in 5, this points the finger back at scoring, though this leaves you wondering why Germany's opponents are regularly sub-par.
The evidence, I think, supports the "bottling it" theory, but not in the sense that players simply lack courage. Just being on the pitch requires that. England regularly fail at penalty shootouts because they expect to. It's worth remembering that their only competitive success since 1990 was against Spain in the quarter-final of Euro 96. I happened to be at that game at Wembley (I was a business freeloader), and I think it's fair to say that everyone's expectation was that England would get to the final. It should also be remembered that in the semi-final, England were running well-above their trend level, having scored 9 in a row (4 against Spain, 5 against Germany). Their failure was the result of a single miss at the start of sudden-death against a team that normally doesn't miss until that stage.
Germany's record is unusual in that they have both a good scoring (93%) and conceding (69%) rate. The two don't often go together - e.g. the Czech's have a 100% scoring rate but conceded 84%, while Portugal conceded only 55% but scored an average-looking 75%. Of course, this highlights that teams who compete in only a few shootouts (3 for the Czechs, 2 for the Portuguese), because they make it to the knock-out stage less often, stand a better chance of a high win ratio overall. Brazil, with a 60% win ratio over 10 shootouts, has an average scoring rate (75%) and a good conceding rate (68%).
What I think these figures may show is that not only are the Germans confident they'll go through, but their opponents seem pretty resigned to the same outcome. In contrast, Brazil's opponents seem slightly more confident in the Selecao than Brazil do themselves. England's opponents are not more confident than average (with the exception of the Germans). Since 1996, they have faced (and failed against) Argentina, Portugal (twice) and Italy. Portugal have a good record, but that is entirely the result of their two contests with England.
The recent match against Italy was typical of the pattern. Everyone was pleased that England had done better than expected, but few genuinely thought the team capable of going any further, and that opinion seemed to be shared by the players, to judge by their performance over the game. Being hard to defeat conclusively in a knockout match, penalties are always a likely outcome for England, and they tend to come at the point when the team has run out of ideas and consequently the belief that they can step up another level. Last 8 seems to be the realistic limit of ambition. In that sense, you have to say that penalties are fair.
So, my conclusion is simple and based on irrefutable evidence. England only win penalty shootouts when I'm in the stadium. If the FA would like to fly me out to Brazil in 2014, I would be happy to oblige.
Friday, 20 July 2012
Cities in Flight
| Apparently, "if the entire population of the planet – estimated to have passed 7 billion last year – lived like the residents of Tower Hamlets or Kensington and Chelsea, they would all fit in an area the size of France". The point being made concerns population density, and the fact that despite over 50% of the world's people now inhabiting towns and cities, urbanisation remains relatively diffuse. Mega-cities are very much the exception. For example, only 8% of the US population live in cities larger than 1 million inhabitants. The image of a concreted over France got me musing about sci-fi cities and how they differ from real cities. What I'm mainly thinking of is the self-contained unit, or arcology, with high-density and a precisely defined boundary. This is a common trope of sci-fi, from glass-domed Martian biospheres to Judge Dredd's Mega City One. Sometimes the boundary serves to shield the population from a hostile environment; sometimes it is the encompassing wall of a prison. This precision of the city limits has allowed it to slip its planetary moorings to become mobile or even morph into a spaceship (James Blish's Cities in Flight). |
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What this indicates may be nothing more than a simple prejudice on the part of SF writers against suburbia, the familiar zone between the relative excitements of city and country, where most of them grew up. While some got to grips with urban sprawl after the 1960s, this tended to be used as a backdrop to resource depletion and social breakdown, which was a realistic concern in New York and some other cities in the 70s. This culminated in the 80s in the iconic vision of the San Francisco Bay area in Bladerunner, a version of Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Since then attention has wandered past regenerated city centres and suburbia to the edgelands, where the urban frays into a confusion of slip-roads, light industrial parks and scrub land, celebrated in the works of JG Ballard, Iain Sinclair and Patrick Keiller.
The desire to precisely mark territory goes back to prehistory, but it appears to be less about defining the state (a modern concept) and more about defining the transition between the sacred and profane in religious complexes. This evolved into the liberties and sanctuaries of medieval cities, and the beating of parish bounds. Through ghettos, phalansteries and kibbutzim, to modern gated communities, the desire to mark "in" from "out", the community from the other, is obviously a social and political imperative. This reached an apogee of sorts in cities divided, rather than surrounded, by walls, such as Berlin, Belfast and Jerusalem. These cities were nothing if not grounded, pinned down by concrete and metal bindings.
Today, in London, we have the spectacle of the Olympic lanes, which seem both physical and yet strangely virtual. Not only do they shift in and out of existence in places, as the reality of traffic flow defeats the intention, but it appears that no earthly power is responsible for them. If we all lived in a France with the housing density of Tower Hamlets, you can still imagine Le Tour taking place, but we'd never be able to cope with Olympic lanes. Of course, this might provide the ideal opportunity to permanently site the games at a rebuilt Olympia (the one in Greece, not West London), a sort of sporting Center Parcs in the deep countryside. IOC grandees and other junket-wallahs would then have no trouble getting to their plushly upholstered seats, and the rest of us wouldn't have to get out of their way.
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